New York Mag article on NYC transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan

The new pedestrian plaza at Herald Square, NYC

Janette Sadik-Khan, the city’s Transportation commissioner, manages to be equal parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. As she prepares to close swaths of Broadway to cars next week, she is igniting a peculiar new culture war—over the role of the automobile in New York.

(Click the quote above to view the whole article.)

What is so radical about the idea that the central city is better off with fewer cars? Pedestrian-friendly zones honor our city centers, and in the long-term, dramatically INCREASE economic activity for local shopowners and taxi drivers too. Like our absence of government-sponsored health care, the United States is the only advanced industrial nation that does not follow this basic design concept in its major cities.

UPDATE (7:30 pm): Heard in the car on the way home tonight, on NPR, a cab driver: “Stupid people, streets are for cars.”